While following the lessons in Staff Blogging Course, which I talked about here, I took a moment to trawl through the Technorati list of Top 100 blogs. It had been a while since I visited Technorati, knowing that much of the blogging world had moved on to other means of ranking and promotion.
There were some familiar names there at the top, like Huffington Post (who are notorious for NOT paying their writers, so don’t even think about it), Gawker, LifeHacker etc, but there were a lot of gossip, lifestyle and celebrity blogs I had never heard of before, many belonging to a company called WeblogsInc, others to AOL under the headings of Lifestyle or Money & Finance etc.
I opened a few of these sites for further perusal, and lo and behold… nothing. No content. Each so-called blog bore a “Coming Soon” or “We’re working on it” message in place of written content, and the pages featured plenty of feeds with ads, more ads, some video news, ads, newsfeeds, and did I mention the ads?
Oh, and guess who owns Weblogs Inc? That’s right! AOL!
So, how did these blogs, completely lacking in any original content whatsoever, get into the Technorati Top 100? Love it or hate it (I hate it) The Huffington post is a legitimate website with plenty of original daily content running alongside its numerous money making ads. But these blogs? Nothing. Just “Coming Soon”.
Blogs that don’t even exist as yet are in the Top 100, reminding me why I haven’t bothered with Technorati in over two years.
That said, I did find a few interesting leads (further down the list) to apply to as a staff blogger, as instructed in the Staff Blogging Course. I’ll keep you posted!
In the meantime, why not try the course for yourself?
Related Articles
2 users responded in this post
So what are people using for ranking? I gave on the Truth Laid Bear, some time ago. Technorati I haven’t looked at in months.
Nothing ever worked for me with any of my blogs on Technorati and I think the game has changed with the entrance of Twitter and Facebook. Why use them when I can control my own marketing through Facebook and Twitter? Not to mention how bad their customer service is and that they rely on Alexa for screen prints of websites … as if Alexa matters anymore either. Last I heard Technorati was under 30 employees and going fast.
Leave A Reply